The Major Causes Of World War I

Many historians agree that the assassination was a significant event however; the writer would argue it was not the major cause of World War 1. The writer would suggest that the major powers had been ready to go to war long before the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand. This was the spark that ignited the war. The writer would argue the major causes of World War I were nationalism, militarism, leadership, imperialism, colonialism and alliances.
Nationalism is extreme patriotic feelings and beliefs over one’s own nation that shows a feeling of superiority over other nations, nationalism in Europe goes as far back as 1789 with the French Revolution but was spread further from The Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century. This is

Before the war there was a 300% increase in military spending by the European nations. “Between 1908 and 1913 the great powers spent a total £7 700 000 000 on armaments…” (Hagan 1968, Page 342) One of the biggest signs of militarism before World War I was the Britain and Germany naval race that began in 1900 with the German Navy Law issuing the construction of forty-one battleships and sixty cruisers. As Britain had the world’s strongest navy adding the Dreadnought, the world’s largest battleship at the time of 1906, they saw Germanys navy build up as a threat to their nation. Many of the nations also had secret war plans long before the war started Germany thought up ‘The Schlieffen Plan’ in 1905 while French army chief General Joffre was finalising ‘Plan Seventeen’ in 1913. It wasn’t just plans being made though as Austria was secretly creating enormous cannons in their Skoda arms factory. All this militarism had been building long before the war and was creating a lot of tension and putting each of the major powers on edge. The government initiated a policy of ‘preparedness for possible war’ and all major powers other than Britain began a mandatory military service, because of this compulsory military training meant the war was considered to be a normal part of European war with people prepared to pay higher taxes to support these programmes. This militarism even led to two Hague

The Frenchs attempt to gain colonies caused much conflict with Germany on two occasions in Morocco, the Tangiers Crisis, 1905, and the Agadir Crisis, 1911. There was also the assassination crisis shortly after the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in July of 1914, these crisis’ caused the major powers to increase their alliances and militarism. Each of the major powers wanted to have great empires which caused a lot of friction, Britain and France had huge overseas empires, Austria-Hungary and Russia had large land based empires but needed to increase their borders to gain access to the Mediterranean Sea and more resources. Germany needed colonies the most as they were the youngest nation with no rich colonies and wanted a ‘place in the sun’ but was too late for the African and Asian colonies. The major powers needed colonies in order to have resources and markets it was essential to have resources in order to be a powerful industrial empire. To protect these empires the nations had to have strong army, navy and railway systems. The Balkans is a mountainous area in eastern Europe and was mostly ruled by Turkey in the Ottoman Empire, this was seen as the ‘powder keg’ of Europe and it was common for wars to take place in this area despite this the Balkan region was desirable to European nations for many reasons for instance Russia wanted it for a